Warsaw will build a Wall of Remembrance bearing the names of all identified Polish victims of 20th century wars in Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said on the anniversary of a World War II massacre that remains at the center of a diplomatic dispute between Poland and Ukraine.
Saturday
marks the 83rd anniversary of the Volhynia Massacre, when members of
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) attacked more than 100 villages in
1943, killing thousands of Polish civilians in events that continue to cast a shadow over relations between Poland and Ukraine.
In
a video posted on X marking the anniversary, Tusk called the Volhynia
Massacre "a genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles
and Polish citizens of other nationalities."
“Those who were murdered cannot
remain nameless, and they cannot be left without a dignified burial.
Remembering them is our shared duty toward their families, the Polish
nation, and the Polish state,” Tusk said.
He added
that efforts were underway to resume searches and exhumations of victims
of the Volhynia crimes, as well as other Polish victims of 20th-century
wars in Ukraine whose remains have not yet received a proper burial.
The
Volhynia Massacre was the deadliest episode in a broader campaign of
killings in which more than 100,000 Poles were murdered by the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (UPA) between 1943 and 1945, in what is today eastern
Poland and western Ukraine.
Poland has long classified the
massacres of Poles as acts of genocide, while Ukraine disputes this,
instead framing the killings as a Ukrainian struggle for an independent
state during a time when Ukrainian populations were split between the
territories of Poland and the Soviet Union.
There are ongoing works to identify and exhume all of the victims of the killings, which were notorious for their brutality.
The two countries’ divisive history has come to the fore in recent weeks.
After
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave the honorary title of
‘Heroes of the UPA’ to an elite fighting unit in May, he was stripped of
Poland’s highest state honor by his Polish counterpart, Karol
Nawrocki.
The snub led to tit-for-tat diplomatic moves that saw many high-profile political figures on both sides return state honors.
Authorities continue efforts to locate and exhume the remains of Polish victims of wartime killings in Ukraine. 